in which professor challenger goes forth to battle
professor challenger was in a bad humour, and when that was so his household were made aware of it. neither were the effects of his wrath confined to those around him, for most of those terrible letters which appeared from time to time in the press, flaying and scarifying some unhappy opponent, were thunderbolt flashes from an offended jove who sat in sombre majesty in his study-throne on the heights of a victoria flat. servants would hardly dare to enter the room where, glooming and glowering, the maned and bearded head looked up from his papers as a lion from a bone. only enid could dare him at such a time, and even she felt occasionally that sinking of the heart which the bravest of tamers may experience as he unbars the gate of the cage. she was not safe from the acridity of his tongue, but at least she need not fear physical violence, which was well within the possibilities for others.
sometimes these berserk fits of the famous professor arose from material causes. “hepatic, sir, hepatic!” he would explain in extenuation after some aggravated assault. but on this particular occasion he had a very definite cause for discontent. it was spiritualism!
he never seemed to get away from the accursed superstition—a thing which ran counter to the whole{213} work and philosophy of his lifetime. he attempted to pooh-pooh it, to laugh at it, to ignore it with contempt, but the confounded thing would insist upon obtruding itself once more. on monday he would write it finally off his books, and before saturday he would be up to his neck in it again. and the thing was so absurd! it seemed to him that his mind was being drawn from the great pressing material problems of the universe in order to waste itself upon grimm’s fairy tales or the ghosts of a sensational novelist.
then things grew worse. first malone, who had in his simple fashion been an index figure representing the normal clear-headed human being, had in some way been bedevilled by these people and had committed himself to their pernicious views. then enid, his ewe-lamb, his one real link with humanity, had also been corrupted. she had agreed with malone’s conclusions. she had even hunted up a good deal of evidence of her own. in vain he had himself investigated a case and proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the medium was a designing villain who brought messages from a widow’s dead husband in order to get the woman into his power. it was a clear case and enid admitted it. but neither she nor malone would allow any general application. “there are rogues in every line of life,” they would say. “we must judge every movement by the best and not by the worst.”
all this was bad enough, but worse still was in store. he had been publicly humiliated by the spiritualists—and that by a man who admitted that he had had no education and would in any other subject in the world have been seated like a child at the professor’s feet.{214} and yet in public debate ... but the story must be told.
be it known then that challenger, greatly despising all opposition and with no knowledge of the real strength of the case to be answered, had, in a fatal moment, actually asserted that he would descend from olympus and would meet in debate any representative whom the other party should select. “i am well aware,” he wrote, “that by such condescension i, like any other man of science of equal standing, run the risk of giving a dignity to these absurd and grotesque aberrations of the human brain which they could otherwise not pretend to claim, but we must do our duty to the public, and we must occasionally turn from our serious work and spare a moment in order to sweep away those ephemeral cobwebs which might collect and become offensive if they were not dispersed by the broom of science.” thus, in a most self-confident fashion, did goliath go forth to meet his tiny antagonist, an ex-printer’s assistant and now the editor of what challenger would describe as an obscure print devoted to matters of the spirit.
the particulars of the debate are public property, and it is not necessary to tell in any great detail that painful event. it will be remembered that the great man of science went down to the queen’s hall accompanied by many rationalist sympathisers who desired to see the final destruction of the visionaries. a large number of these poor deluded creatures also attended, hoping against hope that their champion might not be entirely immolated upon the altar of outraged science. between them the two factions filled the hall, and glared at each other with as much enmity as did the blues and the greens a thousand years before in the hippodrome of constantinople. there{215} on the left of the platform were the solid ranks of those hard and unbending rationalists who look upon the victorian agnostics as credulous, and refresh their faith by the periodical perusal of the literary gazette and the freethinker.
there, too, was dr. joseph baumer, the famous lecturer upon the absurdities of religion, together with mr. edward mould, who has insisted so eloquently upon man’s claim to ultimate putridity of the body and extinction of the soul. on the other side mailey’s yellow beard flamed like an oriflamme. his wife sat on one side of him and mervin, the journalist, on the other, while dense ranks of earnest men and women from the queen square spiritual alliance, from the psychic college, from the stead bureau, and from the outlying churches, assembled in order to encourage their champion in his hopeless task. the genial faces of bolsover, the grocer, with his hammersmith friends, terbane, the railway medium, the reverend charles mason with his ascetic features, tom linden, now happily released from bondage, mrs. linden, the crewe circle, dr. atkinson, lord roxton, malone, and many other familiar faces were to be picked out amid that dense wall of humanity. between the two parties, solemn and stolid and fat, sat judge gaverson of the king’s bench, who had consented to preside. it was an interesting and suggestive fact that in this critical debate at which the very core or vital centre of real religion was the issue, the organised churches were entirely aloof and neutral. drowsy and semi-conscious, they could not discern that the live intellect of the nation was really holding an inquisition upon their bodies to determine whether they were doomed to the extinction towards which they were rapidly drifting, or whether a resuscitation{216} in other forms was among the possibilities of the future.
in front, on one side, with his broad-browed disciples behind him, sat professor challenger, portentous and threatening, his assyrian beard projected in his most aggressive fashion, a half-smile upon his lips, and his eyelids drooping insolently over his intolerant grey eyes. on the corresponding position on the other side was perched a drab and unpretentious person over whose humble head challenger’s hat would have descended to the shoulders. he was pale and apprehensive, glancing across occasionally in apologetic and deprecating fashion at his leonine opponent. yet those who knew james smith best were the least alarmed, for they were aware that behind his commonplace and democratic appearance there lay a knowledge of his subject, practical and theoretical, such as few living men possessed. the wise men of the psychical research society are but children in psychic knowledge when compared with such practicing spiritualists as james smith—men whose whole lives are spent in various forms of communion with the unseen. such men often lose touch with the world in which they dwell and are useless for its everyday purposes, but the editorship of a live paper and the administration of a wide-spread scattered community had kept smith’s feet solid upon earth, while his excellent natural faculties, incorrupted by useless education, had enabled him to concentrate upon the one field of knowledge which offers in itself a sufficient scope for the greatest human intellect. little as challenger could appreciate it, the contest was really one between a brilliant discursive amateur and a concentrated highly-specialised professional.
it was admitted on all sides that challenger’s open{217}ing half-hour was a magnificent display of oratory and argument. his deep organ voice—such a voice as only a man with a fifty-inch chest can produce—rose and fell in a perfect cadence which enchanted his audience. he was born to sway any assembly—an obvious leader of mankind. in turn he was descriptive, humorous and convincing. he pictured the natural growth of animism among savages cowering under the naked sky, unable to account for the beat of the rain or the roar of the thunder, and seeing a benevolent or malicious intelligence behind those operations of nature which science had now classified and explained.
hence on false premises was built up that belief in spirits or invisible beings outside ourselves, which by some curious atavism was re-emerging in modern days among the less educated strata of mankind. it was the duty of science to resist retrogressive tendencies of the sort, and it was a sense of that duty which had reluctantly drawn him from the privacy of his study to the publicity of this platform. he rapidly sketched the movement as depicted by its maligners. it was a most unsavoury story as he told it, a story of cracking toe joints, of phosphorescent paint, of muslin ghosts, of a nauseous sordid commission trade betwixt dead men’s bones on one side, and widows’ tears upon the other. these people were the hyenas of the human race who battened upon the graves. (cheers from the rationalists and ironical laughter from the spiritualists.) they were not all rogues. (“thank you, professor!” from a stentorian opponent.) but the others were fools (laughter). was it exaggeration to call a man a fool who believed that his grandmother could rap out absurd messages with the leg of a dining-room table? had any savages de{218}scended to so grotesque a superstition? these people had taken dignity from death and had brought their own vulgarity into the serene oblivion of the tomb. it was a hateful business. he was sorry to have to speak so strongly, but only the knife or the cautery could deal with so cancerous a growth. surely man need not trouble himself with grotesque speculations as to the nature of life beyond the grave. we had enough to do in this world. life was a beautiful thing. the man who appreciated its real duties and beauties would have sufficient to employ him without dabbling in pseudo sciences which had their roots in frauds, exposed already a hundred times and yet finding fresh crowds of foolish devotees whose insane credulity and irrational prejudice made them impervious to all argument.
such is a most bald and crude summary of this powerful opening argument. the materialists roared their applause; the spiritualists looked angry and uneasy, while their spokesman rose, pale but resolute, to answer the ponderous onslaught.
his voice and appearance had none of those qualities which made challenger magnetic, but he was clearly audible and made his points in a precise fashion like a workman who is familiar with his tools. he was so polite and so apologetic at first that he gave the impression of having been cowed. he felt that it was almost presumptuous upon one who had so little advantage of education to measure mental swords for an instant with so renowned an antagonist, one whom he had long revered. it seemed to him, however, that in the long list of the professor’s accomplishments—accomplishments which had made him a household word throughout the world—there was one missing, and unhappily it was just this one upon which{219} he had been tempted to speak. he had listened to that speech with admiration so far as its eloquence was concerned, but with surprise, and he might almost say with contempt, when he analysed the assertions which were contained in it. it was clear that the professor had prepared his case by reading all the anti-spiritualist literature which he could lay his hands upon—a most tainted source of information—while neglecting the works of those who spoke from experience and conviction.
all this talk of cracking joints and other fraudulent tricks was mid-victorian in its ignorance, and as to the grandmother talking through the leg of a table he, the speaker, could not recognise it as a fair description of spiritualistic phenomena. such comparisons reminded one of the jokes about the dancing frogs which impeded the recognition of volta’s early electrical experiments. they were unworthy of professor challenger. he must surely be aware that the fraudulent medium was the worst enemy of spiritualism, that he was denounced by name in the psychic journals whenever he was discovered, and that such exposures were usually made by the spiritualists themselves who had spoken of “human hyenas” as indignantly as his opponent had done. one did not condemn banks because forgers occasionally used them for nefarious purposes. it was wasting the time of so chosen an audience to descend to such a level of argument. had professor challenger denied the religious implications of spiritualism while admitting the phenomena, it might have been harder to answer him, but in denying everything he had placed himself in an absolutely impossible position. no doubt professor challenger had read the recent work of professor richet, the famous physiologist. that work extended{220} over thirty years. richet had verified all the phenomena.
perhaps professor challenger would inform the audience what personal experience he had himself had which gave him the right to talk of richet, or lombroso, or crookes, as if they were superstitious savages. possibly his opponent had conducted experiments in private of which the world knew nothing. in that case he should give them to the world. until he did so it was unscientific and really indecent to deride men hardly inferior in scientific reputation to himself, who actually had done such experiments and laid them before the public.
as to the self-sufficiency of this world, a successful professor with a eupeptic body might take such a view, but if one found oneself with cancer of the stomach in a london garret, one might question the doctrine that there was no need to yearn for any state of being save that in which we found ourselves.
it was a workmanlike effort illustrated with facts, dates and figures. though it rose to no height of eloquence it contained much which needed an answer. and the sad fact emerged that challenger was not in a position to answer. he had read up his own case but had neglected that of his adversary, accepting too easily the facile and specious presumptions of incompetent writers who handled a matter which they had not themselves investigated. instead of answering, challenger lost his temper. the lion began to roar. he tossed his dark mane and his eyes glowed, while his deep voice reverberated through the hall. who were these people who took refuge behind a few honoured but misguided names? what right had they to expect serious men of science to suspend their labours in order to waste time in examining their{221} wild surmises? some things were self-evident and did not require proof. the onus of proof lay with those who made the assertions. if this gentleman, whose name is unfamiliar, claims that he can raise spirits, let him call one up now before a sane and unprejudiced audience. if he says that he receives messages, let him give us the news in advance of the general agencies. (“it has often been done!” from the spiritualists.) “so you say, but i deny it. i am too accustomed to your wild assertions to take them seriously.” (uproar, and judge gaverson upon his feet.) if he claims that he has higher inspiration, let him solve the peckham rye murder. if he is in touch with angelic beings, let him give us a philosophy, which is higher than mortal mind can evolve. this false show of science, this camouflage of ignorance, this babble about ectoplasm and other mythical products of the psychic imagination was mere obscurantism, the bastard offspring of superstition and darkness. wherever the matter was probed one came upon corruption and mental putrescence. every medium was a deliberate impostor. (“you are a liar!” in a woman’s voice from the neighbourhood of the lindens.) the voices of the dead had uttered nothing but childish twaddle. the asylums were full of the supporters of the cult and would be fuller still if everyone had his due.
it was a violent but not an effective speech. evidently the great man was rattled. he realised that there was a case to be met and that he had not provided himself with the material wherewith to meet it. therefore he had taken refuge in angry words and sweeping assertions which can only be safely made when there is no antagonist present to take advantage of them. the spiritualists seemed more amused than{222} angry. the materialists fidgeted uneasily in their seats. then james smith rose for his last innings. he wore a mischievous smile. there was quiet menace in his whole bearing.
he must ask, he said, for a more scientific attitude from his illustrious opponent. it was an extraordinary fact that many scientific men, when their passions and prejudices were excited, showed a ludicrous disregard for all their own tenets. of these tenets there was none more rigid than that a subject should be examined before it was condemned. we have seen of late years, in such matters as wireless or heavier-than-air machines, that the most unlikely things may come to pass. it is most dangerous to say a priori that a thing is impossible. yet this was the error into which professor challenger had fallen. he had used the fame which he had rightly won in subjects which he had mastered in order to cast discredit upon a subject which he had not mastered. the fact that a man was a great physiologist and physicist did not in itself make him an authority upon psychic science.
it was perfectly clear that professor challenger had not read the standard works upon the subject on which he posed as an authority. could he tell the audience what the name of schrenck notzing’s medium was? he paused for a reply. could he then tell the name of dr. crawford’s medium? not? could he tell them who had been the subject of professor zollner’s experiments at leipzig? what, still silent! but these were the essential points of the discussion. he had hesitated to be personal, but the professor’s robust language called for corresponding frankness upon his part. was the professor aware that this ectoplasm which he derided had been examined lately by twenty german professors—the names were here{223} for reference—and that all had testified to its existence? how could professor challenger deny that which these gentlemen asserted? would he contend that they also were criminals or fools? the fact was that the professor had come to this hall entirely ignorant of the facts and was now learning them for the first time. he clearly had no perception that psychic science had any laws whatever, or he would not have formulated such childish requests as that an ectoplasmic figure should manifest in full light upon this platform when every student was aware that ectoplasm was soluble in light. as to the peckham rye murder it had never been claimed that the angel world was an annex to scotland yard. it was mere throwing of dust in the eyes of the public for a man like professor challenger——
it was at this moment that the explosion occurred. challenger had wriggled in his chair. challenger had tugged at his beard. challenger had glared at the speaker. now he suddenly sprang to the side of the chairman’s table with the bound of a wounded lion. that gentleman had been lying back half asleep with his fat hands clutched across his ample paunch, but at this sudden apparition he gave a convulsive start which nearly carried him into the orchestra.
“sit down, sir! sit down!” he cried.
“i refuse to sit down,” roared challenger. “sir, i appeal to you as chairman! am i here to be insulted? these proceedings are intolerable. i will stand it no longer. if my private honour is touched i am justified in taking the matter into my own hands.”
like many men who override the opinions of others, challenger was exceedingly sensitive when anyone took a liberty with his own. each successive incisive sentence of his opponent had been like a barbed ban{224}darillo in the flanks of a foaming bull. now, in speechless fury, he was shaking his huge hairy fist over the chairman’s head in the direction of his adversary, whose derisive smile stimulated him to more furious plunges with which he butted the fat president along the platform. the assembly had in an instant become a pandemonium. half the rationalists were scandalised, while the other half shouted “shame! shame!” as a sign of sympathy with their champion. the spiritualists had broken into derisive shouts, while some rushed forward to protect their champion from physical assault.
“we must get the old dear out,” said lord roxton to malone. “he’ll be had for manslaughter if we don’t. what i mean, he’s not responsible—he’ll sock someone and be lagged for it.”
the platform had become a seething mob while the auditorium was little better. through the crush malone and roxton elbowed their way until they reached challenger’s side, and partly by judicious propulsion, partly by artful persuasion they got him, still bellowing his grievances, out of the building. there was a perfunctory vote to the chairman, and the meeting broke up in riot and confusion. “the whole episode,” remarked the times next morning, “was a deplorable one, and forcibly illustrates the danger of public debates where the subjects are such as to inflame the prejudices of either speakers or audience. such terms as ‘microcephalous idiot!’ or ‘simian survival!’ when applied by a world-renowned professor to an opponent, illustrate the lengths to which such disputants may permit themselves to go.”
thus by a long interpolation we have got back to the fact that professor challenger was in the worst{225} of humours as he sat with the above-mentioned copy of the times in his hand and a heavy scowl upon his brow. and yet it was that very moment that the injudicious malone had chosen in order to ask him the most intimate question which one man can address to another.
yet perhaps it is hardly fair to our friend’s diplomacy to say that he had “chosen” the moment. he had really called in order to see for himself that a man for whom, in spite of his eccentricities, he had a deep reverence and affection, had not suffered from the events of the night before. on that point he was speedily reassured.
“intolerable!” roared the professor, in a tone so unchanged that he might have been at it all night. “you were there yourself, malone. in spite of your inexplicable and misguided sympathy for the fatuous views of these people, you must admit that the whole conduct of the proceedings was intolerable, and that my righteous protest was more than justified. it is possible that when i threw the chairman’s table at the president of the psychic college, i passed the bounds of decorum, but the provocation had been excessive. you will remember that this smith or brown person—his name is most immaterial—dared to accuse me of ignorance and of throwing dust in the eyes of the audience.”
“quite so,” said malone, soothingly. “never mind, professor. you got in one or two pretty hard knocks yourself.”
challenger’s grim features unbent and he rubbed his hands with glee.
“yes, yes, i fancy that some of my thrusts went home. i imagine that they will not be forgotten. when i said that the asylums would be full if every{226} man of them had his due, i could see them wince. they all yelped, i remember, like a kennelful of puppies. it was their preposterous claim that i should read their hare-brained literature which caused me to display some little heat. but i hope, my boy, that you have called round this morning in order to tell me that what i said last night has had some effect upon your own mind, and that you have reconsidered these views which are, i confess, a considerable tax upon our friendship.”
malone took his plunge like a man.
“i had something else in my mind when i came here,” said he. “you must be aware that your daughter enid and i have been thrown together a good deal of late. to me, sir, she has become the one woman in the world, and i shall never be happy until she is my wife. i am not rich, but a good sub-editorship has been offered to me and i could well afford to marry. you have known me for some time and i hope you have nothing against me. i trust, therefore, that i may count upon your approval in what i am about to do.”
challenger stroked his beard and his eyelids drooped dangerously over his eyes.
“my perceptions,” said he, “are not so dull that i should have failed to observe the relations which have been established between my daughter and yourself. this question, however, has become entangled with that other which we were discussing. you have both, i fear, imbibed this poisonous fallacy which i am more and more inclined to devote my life to extirpating. if only on the ground of eugenics, i could not give my sanction to a union which was built up on such a foundation. i must ask you, therefore, for a definite{227} assurance that your views have become more sane. i shall ask the same from her.”
and so malone suddenly found himself also enrolled among the noble army of martyrs. it was a hard dilemma, but he faced it like the man that he was.
“i am sure, sir, that you would not think the better of me if i allowed my views as to truth, whether they be right or wrong, to be swayed by material considerations. i cannot change my opinions even to win enid. i am sure that she would take the same view.”
“did you not think i had the better last night?”
“i thought your address was very eloquent.”
“did i not convince you?”
“not in the face of the evidence of my own senses.”
“any conjuror could deceive your senses.”
“i fear, sir, that my mind is made up on this point.”
“then my mind is made up also,” roared challenger, with a sudden glare. “you will leave this house, sir, and you will return when you have regained your sanity.”
“one moment!” said malone. “i beg, sir, that you will not be precipitate. i value your friendship too much to risk the loss of it if it can, in any way, be avoided. possibly if i had your guidance, i would better understand these things that puzzle me. if i should be able to arrange it would you mind being present personally at one of these demonstrations so that your own trained powers of observation may throw a light upon the things that have puzzled me.”
challenger was enormously open to flattery. he plumed and preened himself now like some great bird.{228}
“if, my dear malone, i can help you to get this taint—what shall we call it?—microbus spiritualensis—out of your system, i am at your service. i shall be happy to devote a little of my spare time to exposing those specious fallacies to which you have fallen so easy a victim. i would not say that you are entirely devoid of brains, but that your good nature is liable to be imposed upon. i warn you that i shall be an exacting enquirer and bring to the investigation those laboratory methods of which it is generally admitted that i am a master.”
“that is what i desire.”
“then you will prepare the occasion and i shall be there. but meanwhile you will clearly understand that i insist upon a promise that this connection with my daughter shall go no further.”
malone hesitated.
“i give my promise for six months,” he said at last.
“and what will you do at the end of that time?”
“i will decide when the time comes,” malone answered diplomatically, and so escaped from a dangerous situation with more credit than at one time seemed probable.
it chanced that as he emerged upon the landing, enid, who had been engaged in her morning’s shopping, appeared in the lift. malone’s easy irish conscience allowed him to think that the six months need not start on the instant, so he persuaded enid to descend in the lift with him. it was one of those lifts which are handled by whoever uses them, and on this occasion it so happened that, in some way best known to malone, it stuck between the landing-stages, and in spite of several impatient rings it remained stuck for a good quarter of an hour. when the machinery re{229}sumed its functions, and when enid was able at last to reach her home and malone the street, the lovers had prepared themselves to wait for six months with every hope of a successful end to their experiment.
